


Vanya never leaves

by RaysReads



Series: Broken Puzzle Pieces [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Kind!Luther, Luther Hargreeves Deserves Better, Luther Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Protective Vanya Hargreeves, Selective mute Luther Hargreeves, THIS IS NOT VANYA/LUTHER, the mansion gets a makeover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:15:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27614024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaysReads/pseuds/RaysReads
Summary: Luther knew that his siblings leaving was an unspoken negotiation instead of a guarantee. He knew that his father was a cruel man who would stop at nothing to keep his academy going."You have to save the world" he constantly proclaimed.So he stayed so his siblings could leave.Thing is....Vanya never left.It was something he would be eternally grateful for.Follow my fanfiction tumblr to bug me for updates and see what im working on!https://writing-by-candlelight.tumblr.com/
Series: Broken Puzzle Pieces [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018884
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	Vanya never leaves

Once the siblings hit eighteen they start to leave one by one.

Reginald tried to stop them of course, but after Ben and Five….well those who tried would make it out by any means necessary.  
Diego left in the middle of the night without so much as a goodbye, running far and fast to the police academy and a shitty apartment across town.  
Allison left through the window in the early hours of the morning, climbing down the fire escape in designer clothes and heels, hair and make up done up all pretty for her flight and entrance to LA.  
Klaus vanished in the middle of the day, no destination in mind with only twenty bucks to his name and a fancy bottle of brandy.  
Ben was dead.  
Five was still missing.

Luther stayed. He was no idiot, he knew exactly what was wrong with his father. He knew he didn't care for him. He knew how much torture he put the other through. But in order for his sibling to leave he had to stay.  
It was an unspoken deal. If he stayed, Reginald wouldn't go after the other children.

It took years for Luther to ask why Vanya stayed. She turned down a full ride scholarship to Juliard to stay in the large, cold house playing paganini till her fingers bled.  
They spent all their time together, numbers 1 and 7. As children they didn't spend much, if any, time together. They were opposites in every way. They never stood next to each other in line up, both being on either end. They had very little in common, the fearless leader and the outcast, but as young adults left alone in a giant mansion they became closer than they had ever been.

Vanya made a game out of following Luther around the house all day, serenading him with a fitting backing track. When he trained he got action music, often pulled from movies or video games, when he was studying he got calm floating music with long held notes, when the mission alarm blared she played as fast as she could, when he returned she played with happy strokes and pizzicato and she sometimes turned in a circle. And so on and so forth.  
It was a practice in skill and endurance, something she did after mastering everything on the list of hardest pieces she had put together.  
She had written out the list when she first started playing all those years ago and when she finished it 3 months after her 19th birthday she had smiled so hard her face was sore and jumped on Luthers back.  
Mom had made muffins in celebration and they had held a small party.  
It was one of her happiest memories.

It wasn't all happy though. Luther often got hurt on missions and while it wasn't something she was unfamiliar with it was much worse when all the bad guys were focused on just him. She had stitched up more wounds, set more bones, wrapped more burns, pulled out more bullets, and relocated more joints in the past month than she had in the previous 20 years of her life. And Reginald was still there no matter how much they pretended he wasn't. He screamed at Luther in dismay, pushing him harder in training than ever before. On one memorable occasion Vanya had messed up with the stop watch and didn't record the time properly. Luther had given her a small grin to tell her it was fine, but Reginald had grabbed her by the hair and thrown her down the stairs.  
She’d broken four bones and had her jaw sewn shut like Klaus all those years ago.

The longer she stays the sadder and slower her music gets. She no longer dances and jumps and twirls as she plays. At 22 she stands in the middle of the courtyard and sways slowly as she sweeps out a melancholy piece along the strings, the notes blending and slurring until he can't tell where one begins and the other ends.

The longer he stays the quieter he gets. Missions get worse and worse, he comes home covered in blood and dissociating, he recounts his daily mission in a dull monotone and Vanya coaxes him to eat, drink, and get out of his stained clothes. She tends to his wounds and gives him a bath, not even blinking at his nakedness or when she has to wash him. After he is dried and dressed and wrapped in a thick blanket he starts to come around. Her playing coaxing him out of his mind and the invisible blood staining his hands.  
Luther speaks his last words on their 23 birthday, they are spent thanking Vanya and apologizing to her and saying how much he loves her.  
He doesn't die. But he goes selectively mute, his years of trauma catching up to him.

Luther is still fully functional, he and Vanya communicate with sign language and much of their 24th year of life is spent smiling and laughing on the days Reginald isn't there. The rest is gloomy and full of shadows.  
Vanya breaks 4 more bones at the hand of her father that year.  
Luther breaks thrice as many every week.

Halfway through the year Vanya gets a typewriter and sits down to write a book. It's not nice and very clinical, but the world needed to know how their ever-romanticised umbrella academy really worked.  
She shows the first draft to Luther and he isn't happy. Apparently even she doesn't understand her siblings fully. He edits it for her and they work together to spread the full horror of Reginald hargreeves across dozens of pages.

‘....locked in a mausoleum…’

‘....in a tank of water for hours on end…’

‘....forced to kill dozens…’

‘....never loved us…’

‘....impossible…’

‘....we don't have real names, only numbers…’

‘....competitive number system…’

‘....49 broken bones before the age of 6…’

‘....cuffed, gagged and shackled to a chair. He had to stay for days until he got himself out…’

They didn't publish it of course. Who knew what Reginald would do while they still lived under his roof.  
No.  
They bound the finished version in thick leather and stored it in a locked box in Klaus’ room. Somewhere their father would never look. 

The hargreaves children's bedrooms were separated onto two levels. Five and Ben had room next to the attic. Their powers were the most volatile at a young age, so they were kept a level above to prevent injury to themselves and the others.  
The other five children were kept in a long hallway. Luthers and Allisons bedroom were at the end and right next to each other.  
With everyone else gone and Vanya and Luther being lonely, they decided to renovate. For their 25th birthday their father had to leave for a year long research study. 1 and 7 were overjoyed but hid it well.  
Once he left they got to work.

They moved all the furniture in the rooms to the attic and began to tear down the walls between the bedrooms. They ripped down the wall between Klaus’ room and Vanya's room first and gave both to Klaus. They covered one wall in bricks as a nice accent wall and placed a full sized bunk bed in front of it with lots of fluffy pillows and blankets for their brother who was always cold. There was no bottom bunk, just an area filled with beanbags and stuffed animals. They painted the walls a nice green and went to goodwill for some rustic looking shelves and desks. They hung a mirror over the desk and added buckets of nailpolish and makeup in the most random and vivid of colors they could find. At the same thrift store they also bought lots of skirts, coats, crop tops, mesh shirts, crazy pants, boots, and loud jewelry. After lying down a fluffy rug they considered that done and moved on.

Tearing down the wall between Luther and Allison's room was easy. They painted the walls and ceiling a nice dark blue and Luther spent days painting in the constellations and stars with a tiny paintbrush and some white paint. The most impressive was when he used an airbrush to paint in nebulae with reds and purples and greens. The floors were a deep mahogany and had plush purple rugs laid across.  
Luther and Vanya would share this room, a singular king sized bed was against the far wall. It was made of a dark wood and had white velvet curtains and a black plush bedding. There were two desks and a few bookshelves. They had a walk-in closet and ensuite bathroom and Vanya had several violins mounted on the wall. Luther's Record player was his most prized possession and was inside a removable glass case on a horizontal shelf.

(decades later when they finally go to therapy the word codependency gets thrown around a lot. They don't mind.) 

Allisons room gets moved to the other end of the hall across from Diego (who is next to Klaus). They take out the empty storage room and the hall closet to give her a large space. The walls get painted sunset colors. One a muted pink, one light yellow, one a pretty orange, one a light purple. The bed, shelves, closet and vanity are made from a white wood and carved with leaves and vines and flowers. She has some drawers and nightstands that are the same but without the carvings. Luther makes a new necklace tree by hand. He spends a lot of time welding in and is super proud when it's done. They frame every promo poster from her movies and hang them up. The rugs are a light pink.

Diego's room gets done up in muted browns and burnt oranges. His bed frame hung from the ceiling by four chains and he had several targets against one wall. All the weapons he abandoned when he left the academy were hung in display cases on his wall (a chainsaw, several battle axes, two maces, a sword...).  
They made him a real knife harness, not one made from fetish gear and put up curtains that plunged the room into darkness. Even slight light at night looked blue and seemed to make the room seem like it was underwater and that often sent Diego into panic attacks.

At first they weren't sure if they were going to do Fives and Bens rooms. The others wouldn't mind, they had all moved on as best they could, and while the rooms were untouched from the last time the occupants had been there, Vanya made it her mission to do both rooms by herself while Luther went out on missions.  
Yes, their father was still giving Luther mission orders by a telecommunication device in the main hall.

Between patching Luther up and Violin playing, she slowly renovated Five's room. She (with the help of Grace) knocked out the wall between it and the attic before putting the new wall up a few feet back. She replaced the twin bed with a comfier one with plush lavender bedding (unbeknownst to the rest of the academy, his favorite color) and painted all the walls with chalkboard paint. She then got a giant desk with a grey rug and placed all his old notebooks and writing utensils on it. A new shelf went under the window filled with baskets of yarn, thumbtacks, chalk in all colors, expo markers (for the giant whiteboard), colored paper, new notebooks, markers, crayons and any other craft item ever.

Ben's room she did tastefully in light woods and various shades of dark green. There was a floor to ceiling wall of bookcases and a nice desk with fancy writing things, medical books, and her old typewriter. This was the room she knew would never be used (she still had hope for Five) so she put less stock in comfort and more in aesthetics and activities. It looked very antique and beautiful in the end.

She had just finished the bathrooms on their floor and the attic floor (separate boxes with handles and locks for everyone's bathroom things and personal effects. She had put the basics in each. A large bathtub with jets for Klaus) when the accident happened. 

She had rushed down into the basement but it was already too late. Reginald had returned and with him a badly burned Luther.  
A dead Luther.

Vanya screamed.

Reginald slapped her hard enough for her to see stars and for her eye socket to fracture.

Luther was dead for five minutes before he came back with Reginalds magic serum and it took him three weeks to wake up. Within that time Vanya refused to leave his side except for when her orbital bone needed treatment. She watched him change, how he screamed in his sleep as his DNA was ripped apart, as his muscles tore and bones rearranged themselves, as skin grew and spread and hair forced its way out.

He let out an inhuman screech when he woke and Vanya flinched back before reaching in for a hug. 

Luther hated his body, hated how a medical procedure was done without his consent, hated how he had been warped.  
He hated himself.  
It took weeks for him to stop punching mirrors. Months for him to be comfortable with Vanya and Grace touching his bare skin. It took lots of coaxing on Vanya's part for him to stop covering every inch of himself. She saw it as repayment for the months he spent coaxing her into speaking her mind and training her in self defense when their father wasn't around.

Then he got sent to the moon.

The fucking moon.

Vanya played sad music for weeks once he left. Luther tried not to think of the abuse she must've been facing alone with her father, the main focus of his tyranny. He hoped she finally left.

She hadn't.

She waited for him, for four long years. They sent messages back and forth with the telecommunicator. She sent him clips of her playing his favorite compositions. And for their birthday a 24 hour recording of his record player playing all his favorites. He often listened to it as an audio track but if he watched it as a video he could see clips of Vanya doing a funky interpretive dance to certain songs.

The day their father died was the happiest either of them had ever felt. When Luther came back to earth they both cried and Vanya didn't let go of him the entire day as they laid in bed.

The next day their siblings started arriving. Vanya knew everyone would be there, even if Luther was skeptical. But Vanya knew that everyone had to make sure the nightmare was finally over.

$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&$%&

Vanya waited anxiously in the living room. They had redone that too while their father was gone for that one blissful year. It was mostly the same but they got a better couch and rugs and got rid of all the cluttered antiques on the many tables.  
She had set out a platter of crustless sandwiches, tea, and whiskey and was nibbling on a cucumber one herself. She knew everyone else would be here soon and was nervous about it.  
Luther was upstairs waiting, he wanted her to tell the rest of the academy what had happened to him. How he didn't talk, how he was part ape.

Diego was the first to arrive. He stared at her for a second, shocked at her new look.  
She had an A-line bob and dark kohl lining her eyes, and was wearing an off the shoulder hand knitted purple sweater (thanks Luther) and ripped black skinny jeans with knee high combat boots.  
He quickly moved on and sat on the new couch, looking around himself in wonder. He startled as Vanya handed him a tray with a vegan wrap and unsweetened tea.

“Don't worry I remembered your veganism.” She rolled her eyes as he cautiously inspected his wrap and took a sip of his tea.

“Thanks sis.”

The door was thrown open and rapid muttering with a side of random singing fluttered into the house. Diego exchanged a glance with Vanya knowing exactly who just entered the house with as much drama as possible. The voice went silent at the slightly new interior before Klaus swept into the room.

“Vanya darling!!! You look amazing!!!! Loving the new hair!!!! And Diego, still rocking the leather I see!!!!” Vanya laughed and leaned into Klaus’ warm embrace.

Vanya turned to the table and handed him a strawberry banana sandwich with chocolate sauce, caramel and butter pecan ice cream. It had two frozen waffles as the bread. It was a monstrosity that only Klaus would come up with. The rest of his siblings wanted to vomit when he started making them for breakfast when high. But when she handed it over he beamed like he had never been happier and she thought it was worth it.  
She poured him some whiskey and the three of them got to talking before Allison finally entered.

Allison was gorgeous, no surprise there. She was tall and beautiful and had her makeup professionally done. Vanya tried not to fall into her old routine of cowering when faced with her siblings powerful auras of confidence and power, but it was hard without Luther there. She could already feel the anxiety creeping in and he had only been out of her sight for 15 minutes.

She kissed Allison on both cheeks and handed her a turkey club and some orange juice. She had remembered all their childhood sandwich favorites and they were all touched.

“So Vanya,” Allison started, “What have you been doing with your life since you left. I know about Diego enrolling and getting out of the Police Academy, I know about Klaus and his time on the streets, but i have no idea what you've been up to.”

Klaus and Diego halted their conversation and turned to her in interest. Vanya on the other hand looked surprised, she thought they knew. “I never left.”

They stared at her in shock. “I must have misheard, did you say you stayed here for over 10 years with Dad!!!!” Diego was horrified that anyone other than Luther would have done that.

Vanya's gaze turned hard and cold. “Yes I stayed! I couldn't leave him here like you assholes did!!! He didn't willingly stay you idiots!!! He stayed so you could go!!! If he had left Reginald would have dragged you guys back here!!! If you thought he would just let you leave without consequences, you guys are stupider than I thought!!!!” She breathed deeply to get her emotions under control before continuing. “I stayed so that he wouldn't have to get the brunt of Reginald's anger and frustration. I had to patch more injuries in a single week then in all my years with the whole team here. The solo missions were too much for one person. And that's why he's upstairs and not here. There some things you need to know.”

Allison had tears welling in her eyes. Klaus looked like all his masks had been ripped off and he had a world weariness he shouldn't. Diego was in shock, like he had never given Luther a second thought since he left.

“Six years ago on our birthday was the last time Luther spoke.  
I had done something wrong and Reginald dragged me away in the middle of the night.” She pulled a sleeve up to reveal dark pink raised scars that started at the base of her neck and covered her body in Lichtenberg figures, “He was forced to watch me get electrocuted for hours, unable to stop it, separated from me by thick plexiglass. It broke something in him. He failed in his duty as number one before - an ideology i've been trying to drill out of him for years - You got hurt on missions, Ben died, Five left. None of it his fault, even as he was told it was. But he kept _me_ safe. I was always always safe. so when that happened...something in his mind snapped. No matter how much he wants to talk he can't.  
And then a bit over four years ago he was sent on a mission. It was at a chemical plant and while i don't know the specifics he came back burnt to a crisp. He was fucking dead for over five minutes. And while Reginald did something to him to save him his body was warped. He's part ape and he hates it. I spent months trying to get him to stop hurting himself and hating himself and smashing mirrors. And while it's still hard he's getting better.”

Throughout her story she was sad and angry and disgusted. She wanted to bring their father back to life just to kill him all over again. She glared at her siblings in turn (One sobbing, one dissociating, one angry) before addressing them again.

“I don't want even one comment towards his body or his speaking. You got that?! Not. One.” She aimed her glare at Diego in particular who seemed offended because not even he would go that far. And the sight of meek and quiet Vanya that angry would deter hurricanes.  
“Good.”

She left the room to get Luther, her sibling stewing in silence. 

"How didn't we know?" Allison's question is whispered and her voice rough with tears. "Were we so blind to realize our leaving would have no consequences?" 

Diego stubbornly fought his distress. Anger replacing guilt. "How could Dad do that?! How could he electrocute Vanya. She doesn't have powers, she doesn't have the pain tolerance we do. And even if she did…" ge trailed off into angry grumbling.

Klaus stared off into the distance both listening to Ben's angry ranting and staving off flashbacks. He was pissed that his father would do any of that but also not at all surprised.  
He had always been an asshole.

When Luther entered the room the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. He was wearing a sleeveless black turtleneck and slacks with shiny shoes and fingerless black gloves. He smiled and waved at all of them once he saw them. Both nervous and extremely happy. 

The changes were immediately obvious.

He'd gotten huge. towering easily over them and having to duck through doorways. His fingers had elongated to those of an ape. The bulging muscles looked painfully big and the exposed arms were coated in thick bristle like hair that was tinged an unnatural shade of blue.

Allison ran up and hugged him, her tears finally subsided. He stepped back and signed his greetings. His joy at seeing her evident in his expression. Diego's demeanor softened at the familiar symbols he'd used when his stutter was at its worst. He was a bit rusty but carefully folded and extended his fingers and hands as necessary in order to greet Luther.

Klaus' signing was rapid fire but precise. Perhaps the best out of anyone's. "Hey Luther. How's it going? Vanya has been telling me all about that marvelous garden of yours!"  
He'd been using it to talk over the screaming ghosts since before she could speak and used it daily on the streets. When the screaming was so loud he couldn't hear, or with the many disabled that couldn't find jobs or were kicked out of their homes.

Luther flushed, "It's not that big yet. But I've been keeping a bonsai for eight years now. I can never get the orchids to grow though, I know they're moms favorite."

He accepts the stack of BLTs from Vanya with a smile and eats them with some unsweetened tea.  
Luther, Ben and Five had always eaten the most because of the energy their powers used. It didn't look strange for Luther to eat that much, he had always been tall and big. But it was horrifyingly fascinating to watch tiny Five eat an entire turkey with sides in under 20 minutes.

Everyone but Allison signed along as they spoke. While Luther could hear, it seemed to make him happy and feel more included.  
When you're in Italy you speak Italian even if the person knows English. It's only polite.

Allison didn't know ASL. She had considered Klaus' use of it stupid as a child, not understanding how his powers worked. And she didn't need to know how to speak it with Diego, only read it. So she had never put in the effort.  
With everyone singing around her (from Diego's shaky muscle memory and clumsiness, Klaus' sharp, perfect symbols, Vanya's comfortable ease, and Luther's rapid words) she was regretting that now.

"So we have a surprise for you guys…" Luther seemed kind of nervous which was peculiar. But Vanya shot him a comforting smile and he relaxed slightly. “We didn't really expect any of you to ever come back, but when Reginald left for a whole year on some sort of travel business thing we...well we renovated all our rooms?” It came out more as a question than anything.

Klaus, Diego, and Allison exchanged curious looks before shooting out of their seats. Klaus was the first to reach the stairs cackling madly, but Diego quickly pushed him aside ignoring his shouts of _no fair_. In the end Allison got to the hallway first and stopped. 

It looked completely different than it had as children, with customised doors, light wood for the floors, and robin's egg blue walls. They stood in silence, reveling in the newness.  
Diego was the first to enter his room. His door had been hand done by Luther, Black wood with bronze metal swirls attached in a detailed design. He marveled at how much he liked to room, how perfect it seemed for him.  
Klaus sprinted down to his room, excitement radiating off him. His room was bright and airy and big full of crazy colours and his favorite type of clothes - those from the thrift store. His eyes watered once he opened the closet. _He loved it._  
Ben strongly disagreed.


End file.
